You have developed a brand new product. This will give your company an edge over the competition. You need to keep the price low, in order to get a quick market penetration and keep the competition at bay. Quantities are high, but there is quite a bit of manual labor involved. Europe is simply too expensive. What to do?
A friend of yours has the solution : China. He also has a contact for you, we will call him Mr. Fong. You speak with him, the communication is smooth and he seems honest. You send Fong the information about the product and he starts to work. After a couple of days, Fong contacts you and explains that he has found a good supplier. You decide to visit China, to see the factory, that will produce your product. After arriving, you are royally received by Mr. Fong and the supplier. A festive meal is prepared and a nice tour through the impressive factory give you a very good feeling about the deal. After a long and intense negotiating process, you decide to work with this supplier.
You agree to pay for the molds and the prototypes and indeed after a few weeks you receive one. You look and feel and measure, there are some small discrepancies, but you feel that we are on the right track. Mr. Fong is informed of the changes and the supplier agrees to improve the parts.
There is an important trade show in a few weeks time and there the new product will be introduced to the world. You have informed all your dealers of this new development and they are also very exited. You ask mr. Fong, when the new and improved will be available. He assures you: next week. The next week, the same answer. The day of the show comes closer and closer, but no parts. At the end of the day, you end up with no parts. You can only show the useless first models and some leaflets you made from a computer model. Everybody is quite disappointed.
During a quit moment at your stand, you decide to take a stroll. To see what the competition is doing. But what is this?? At a Chinese competitor’s stand: your product, in the exact configuration you indicated. Even in the exact packaging you prescribed, only the name is Chinese. How is this possible? You call mr. Fong, but no response. You call the factory, but they have no orders for the parts. They have never even made the samples.
If you are lucky you have patented the parts, if not, you have lost the product completely.
D&D Safe Sourcing prevents this from happening. We have the whole supply chain under control, from order to delivery. We decide where the individual parts are made. We assemble the end product. No supplier of ours knows where the parts are for. No supplier has all the drawings and specifications to build the final product.
